


Stranger

by motherstone



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket, The Hero of the Story - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Homelessness, Sick Character, Starvation, or where Jacques is the one who finds his brother post-hero of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27839626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherstone/pseuds/motherstone
Summary: He's been missing for over a year.He hasn't seen his brother in three.He should've known he wouldn't recognize him at first.
Relationships: Jacques Snicket & Lemony Snicket
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> I am APPALLED at the sheer lack of brotherly content of these two. *cracks knuckles* Somebody obviously had to fix that. It's supposed to be a fic that leads up to the Association AU, but I realized it can easily stand on its own. There should be more chapters before this reunion, but eh I'm too impatient ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ the build up was pretty important. Feel free to ask questions about it in my tumblr though @theoriquewitherseld.

Close. The library was close.

He hastens, his body protesting the strain. His lungs ached, his feet hurt and bleeding, and he feels like he would never be warm again. The hunger panging in his stomach didn’t help the ache in his head either, nor did the fear pooling and mingling in it.

The bustling crowd around him caused a loud racket that’s painful in his ears, and he’s been hit with elbows, bodies, suitcases, his feet stepped upon and being glared at. He remains within its perimeters anyway. It was the best camouflage he had against whoever has been ruthlessly pursuing him for the past hour.

A chill trailed down his spine that makes him shudder told him it failed. The distraction of the crowd was not enough. His stomach then drops a few steps down the stairs. They found him again.

His panicked eyes darted around, frantic. It was pointless. Not when the people and their faces blended and dissolved into a mess of abstract colors and shapes. Not when he can’t trust his own eyes, having been hallucinating the past few days due to sickness. He’s not sure what caused it, nor what it was. He kept searching anyway, his training overriding his reasoning, wasting a few precious moments to search for any suspicious person.

_That could be anyone_ , he thought, starting to walk again, and quickens his pace when he can sense his pursuer follow him once again. His head feels like flying away. _It could be anyone_. VFD. Lois Lowry. Hangfire. Gabriel. The police. Jonas. Some of it felt wrong. Some of it felt very, _very_ plausible. It didn’t matter.

But the library is within his view now, catching a glimpse of it above the heads of the bustling crowd. Despite himself, he can feel his heart swell a bit with unexpected hope. Safe. A safe place. He’s _close_. He can lose his pursuer among the labyrinthine shelves and escape. He breaks into a sprint, only needing to cover a few more meters –

He jerks to an abrupt stop, a hand gripping his arm out of of the blue. Instinctively, he wrenches his arm out of the hold, but he fails. It wouldn’t give. It felt like no force in the world can.

He whips around in panic, and comes face to face with his pursuer.

It was a tall, young man clad in such black clothes that his red scarf and fancy white hat looked out of place. The hat looked somewhat familiar. But the man was not. So, he doesn’t know why he would be chasing him. He was panting, his breath visible puffs in the freezing air. The he sees it. His face dissolving into anger. It was enough to keep him from struggling from his grip, its burning intensity keeping him frozen on the spot. Then there was no longer a hand gripping his arm, they were gripping his shoulders instead. His heart felt like leaping from his chest.

The young man then yells at him, shocking him so much that he couldn’t understand what he’s been saying. It frightened him, the unhinged anger, the confusing words. The loud sounds blended into an incomprehensible and terrifying cacophony, each and every word drove spikes of pain in his head. But the man kept yelling anyway. All he could do was just stare.

However, the more he looked, his confusion slowly mixed with fear. He thinks his sickness may actually be worsening, his mind making up another hallucination. It was becoming more vivid lately, and it always made him ache for his loved ones after it passes and his vision settles once more. The man. He can see his face properly now, despite splotches of black occasionally marring his vision. He looked a lot like his brother, But his features looked wrong. _Off_. The edges of his face are more angled, the hair was shorter, and beneath the anger, he looked haggard. Tired. _Older_. He wonders dazedly how could he even think that he looked remotely like his brother, whilst looking so much like him? He doesn’t know if it comforted him or scared him, this uncanny similarity and dissimilarity. Why would he be here? Why would he even come? It’s been _years_.

He snaps out of his daze when a hand grabbed his shirt. He stares at the tight fist, at the dirty ragged fabric in its grip, and his heart leaps to his throat. Then it jerks him forward, so fast and violently his head spins and his stomach trills with fear, and he braces himself for the blow –

And then he’s enveloped with warmth. He realizes the man had put his arms around him, so tightly that his face was burrowed to his chest. He didn’t expect this. _He didn’t expect this_. It threw his mind into a confounded, panicked tempest. Thoughts rendered a wild, directionless nonsense until he breathes in and. And. And he smells familiar.

He knows this scent, even if its been so long, it was still startlingly distinct in his mind and overwhelmingly and achingly _familiar_ that it utterly rendered him dazed with dizziness. His breath hitched in his throat. His thoughts froze.

Jacques.

He was just held there, for a long time. He doesn’t even notice what the crowd was doing, if they stopped and stared, or if they went along with their business. He can’t seem to breathe. A hand rests on the back of his head, pressing him down further. There, he can hear his brother’s heartbeat. It was beating rapidly. He can feel his chest expand with every breath.

Neither of them dared move. Then, the embrace loosens, and he can feel hands on his shoulders gently push him back at an arm’s length. He didn’t want it to. Then Jacques lowers himself at his height so he wouldn't have to look up. His face no longer looked angry. He can see his cheeks were wet, and when his eyes met his, they were red and glassy and tired. Then he asks.

“Are you alright?” he says.

_Are you alright?_ It’s what he imagined his siblings would ask him, over and over, in his vivid imaginations of an impossible reunion. They were always nowhere to be found once the hallucination passes, but he kept thinking it anyway because it makes him feel less lonely and less hurting, even for a moment. Even it led to him aching more after. And now one of them came, and he finally asked it.

He opens his mouth. What he wanted to answer, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what the right answer is. But before he could know, he cries instead.

He can feel Jacques hold him again, and he can’t help but bury his face on his shoulder, hands gripping with vice at his brother’s arms, his sleeves, trying to keep him grounded, from disappearing. That he's here and he's _real_. He feels too many things at once – relief, shock, misery, guilt, sadness — that they all choke him, an overwhelming pressure that threatened to burst and it breaks him instead. He couldn’t stop his tears, his cries. He wishes Jacques won't let him go.

Jacques didn’t let go. He keeps holding him, and he knows it is the only thing that keeps him from falling apart into irreparable pieces. He was murmuring something in his ear, but he couldn’t hear it over his own sobs. All it sounded like was a nonsense mantra, repeated over and over like a broken record.

But then he feels something in him, expanding, engulfing like a tidal wave. As it does, his body numbs, his breathing slows, and his vision darkens and then – it tides over him. It felt like he got submerged underwater, sounds and sensations rendered mute, consciousness floating but the pain gets amplified instead. It took him moments to realize he has fallen limp in Jacques’s arms, not when time moved so sluggishly around him.

“Lem?” He hears him ask, but he sounded so far away, as if he is in the bottom of a well. His body couldn’t move, much less respond.

“Egad, you’re freezing.” Jacques murmurs in his ear. Then the warmth disappears. The loss of warmth hurts worse than his head, more than anything else. He wants to speak, but his head felt like splitting itself open and turning itself inside out and he can’t. He can’t speak at all.

He hears a rustling sound, and he can feel a fabric wrap around him, and another around his throat and face. It was less warm than when he held him, but it was still so mercifully blissful than the iciness he’s been dealing with for so long that the relief was agony. He makes a small, involuntary noise – nothing more than an inaudible gasp — yet he can feel Jacques grip his shoulders.

“Lem, are you with me?” He doesn't answer. The grip on his shoulders firms.

“Just hold on a little longer, ok?” He pleads quietly. “I’m here now. You’ll be okay. You’re safe now. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there before, but I’m here now." He hears a shaky, wet sigh. "I’m here.”

He gets shifted. The warmth pressed on his side this time, and he finds himself drawn to it, desperate. He feels like a cocoon. Then he can feel arms on his back and knees, and then he’s being lifted, the sudden shift making his mind swim. His stomach churned a little, feeling the height. But the arms lifting him felt firm, and thus he does not fear if he would be dropped. Then, he can feel footsteps under him, taking them both away.

He doesn’t know where they’re going. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. But Jacques, _Jacques_ is here. The last person he ever expected to come, _came_. It baffles him, why he did, but it felt like it didn’t matter, just that his brother is here. This was the first he felt so safe and so warm for a very long time, that all whispers of worry in his head were ignored. It didn't take long for them to dissolve into silence.

All he could see was black, and he was gently swaying. Back then, he would've hated this, the rocking. But this was his first kind touch during his entire period being unsupervised, he can’t bring himself to mind. If he tried, really tried, he could imagine himself in a hammock, underneath a night sky at a quiet sea.

He snuggles in the coat; the gentleness lulls him. He allows himself to sink into nothingness.


End file.
